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| The one and only dog I've ever had, Nosey. |
I thought I would do a continuation of yesterday’s
post. As I have mentioned, I grew up out
in Pine Canyon. It’s about three miles
East of Tooele, nestled up against the base of the mountains. When I grew up out there, it was a very small
and quiet stretch of road. Now, the
fields I used to romp around in and hunt down lizards and horny toads are all
houses, neighborhoods, and subdivisions.
It’s quite strange for me to venture out to Tooele these days and see
how much that once little sleepy town has grown.
I mentioned in yesterday’s post how we had an acre of ground
with fruit trees and a garden. My family
lived off the land as much as we possibly could. We had a mini orchard with a pie cherry tree,
a regular cherry tree, apple trees, peach trees, pear trees, and plum
trees. We grew grapes, and had a
raspberry patch to die for, it was huge and not only that, it produced some of
the biggest raspberries you ever did see.
We had a garden with a nice Strawberry patch. We grew corn, green beans, tomatoes, green
peppers, peas, and pumpkins for making pumpkin pies. My brothers and I had to help all summer long
with weeding the garden and come fall we would be hands deep in helping with
the canning of it all.
Our back yard was a fun back yard, not only did we have the
mini orchard and garden but we had a huge Russian Olive tree that we built a
tree house in. There was a tire swing
that my dad put up and we had a Tarzan swing.
Dad would let us dig in certain parts of the yard. Out at the very back of the yard we had a
pond with a chicken coop and pig pen.
Because not only did we live off the land with fruits and vegetables but
we raised our own meat.
DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a vegetarian or a vegan. I never have been and I have no intentions of
ever becoming so. If any of you reading
this are of that persuasion, I caution you to read no further. DISCLAIMER PART TWO: I do not believe in animal cruelty, I
believe it is wrong. For example, I personally
do not like dogs and therefore would never own one. As I said yesterday, I like cats for some of
the very reasons people dislike them.
The same is true for dog owners, they love their dogs for the very
reasons I dislike them. To each their own,
however, I do not agree with people who would mistreat an animal just because
they didn’t like the species, or because they could earn money by making the
animal fight. I do believe however, that
animals were placed on this earth by our Heavenly Father for our use. Part of that use is for food. I know there are people who would disagree
with me on that. I suggest we agree to
disagree agreeably. We will never see
eye to eye on that point. I’m sure you
have figured out from my disclaimer that we raised animals for meat
purposes. Our animals were never
mistreated or abused in any way. They
were well fed and cared for animals.
They had plenty of food, water, and shelter. They were given all the necessities of life
they needed and required. And I know
there are people out there against the very use of animals for a food source
and would consider the very act of us raising these animals for that purpose as
offensive and abusive. As I said, I’m
not one of those kinds of people so it would be pointless to argue that
further. I like meat, I will always eat
meat. Having that all out of the way,
let’s get to the meat of my story. Pun
intended.
We had two kinds of chickens. We had layer chickens. These were the chickens that we would rely on
for our eggs. And let me tell you, there
is nothing in this world like a fresh egg.
The pitiful things we buy in the stores are a sorry excuse for what an
egg really should look and taste like.
Then we had our fryer chickens and yes folks, that was part of our meat. We butchered our own chickens every
year. And my brothers and I had to help
in the whole process. We would start out
early in the morning with what was our favorite part. We called it going to the “movies”, much to
the chagrin of mom. She always called us
her blood thirsty children. I guess to
an extent we were. The reason we called
it “going to the movies” was because after dad lopped of the head, they had to
be hung upside down to let the blood drain out.
In order to not bruise and spoil the meat you had to be very quick and
skilled. You had to tie the wings and
feet together quickly to prevent the chicken from flopping around and spoiling
the meat. Dad was very quick and skilled
at this, but even the best of the best don’t always get it right. Our hope was to see one of the chickens come
loose and run around the yard with its head cut off. After the butchering came our least favorite
part of the process……the plucking. The
easiest way to pluck a chicken is to dip it in hot water to loosen the feathers
and then pluck them out as quick and fast as you can. The smell, wet chickens stink, the feathers
would stick to your fingers and the small fine feathers were a pain to try and
pull. After the plucking, things got
pretty interesting as we would watch dad gut the chickens and cut them into
specific pieces. We found the intestines
to be fascinating and loved to watch dad cut open the gizzard and we could
sometimes see half eaten grasshoppers.
And remember my cats I mentioned, they also loved this part. It was a feeding frenzy as they would hang
about waiting for dad to toss down the parts that were unusable. After a while the cats would have eaten their
fill and couldn’t eat any more. Dad
always saved the heart and gizzard, I had a particular taste for chicken heart
and my brothers would always fight over the gizzard come our regular Sunday
dinner of chicken. My brothers and I
would spend our summer days with empty gallon milk jugs out in the yard catching
grasshoppers. We would pull off the
hoppers and shove them in the jug. When
our jug was full we would go out to the chicken run and dump the grasshoppers
out then we would sit back and enjoy the show as the chickens would run around
like nuts trying to eat as many grasshoppers as they could. We would also hunt down the tomato worms in
the tomato patch and watch the chickens flock to eat the big juicy worms.
We also raised Turkeys.
And let me tell you, these Turkeys were nothing like the small pathetic
things you find in the stores when the holidays roll around. Our turkeys could get up to 35 pounds. And let me tell you, butchering a 35 pound
Turkey is no easy feat. Our ward always
had a Thanksgiving dinner for the widows, and dad would supply the Turkey’s for
it. The hitch is that the young men
would have to come over and help to butcher and prepare the Turkey. There was one year that I will never
forget. We had a young man in the ward
who rode bulls in the rodeo. He was a
stout young fellow and figured that since he was stout and a pretty good rodeo
rider that he could just sit on the Turkey while dad loped off its head. The plan went well until the Turkey’s head
came off. I’ve never seen such shock on
a person’s face before. This Turkey
stood up and took off across the yard with the young man on its back holding on
for dear life. The headless Turkey
managed to buck him off sending him sprawling across the yard into the
dirt. Needless to say the poor kid never
lived that event down. He could ride
bucking bulls but not a bucking Turkey.
And we also raised pigs.
We learned a lesson one year, never buy male pigs. No matter how well constructed your pen is,
they will find a way out. And if you
want any hopes of a garden, pigs should not be in it rooting around. And cattle prods have no effect on a full
grown male pig. We stuck with getting
either female pigs or neutered males, much easier to deal with. My mom, just recently found out that I used
to go out and play in the mud with the pigs.
I thought she always knew. Oh
well. I was smart enough to only play
with the pigs when they were little. We
always bought them as piglets in the spring.
Once the pigs got big enough I would not go back into the pen. I hope that sets your mind at ease some
mom. LOL. I don’t know about my brothers, but I always
named each pig and then later would wonder who I was eating. I don’t know why I did that, but I did. Members of the ward would buy a pig and my
dad would raise it. When the pigs were
big enough, those who had purchased a pig would come to help wrangle them up to
be sent off to the butcher shop. One
year our bishop purchased a pig. We were
having a time getting those pigs into the trailer. Somehow I think it was the year we got the
male pigs. Anyway, this one pig got loose
and ran directly between the bishops legs and took one very startled bishop on
a ride around the yard.
We had a pond out in the back yard and naturally had to have
ducks and geese. We didn’t eat the ducks
and geese, we just had them for the fun of it.
One year my older brother brought some tadpoles home from a scout camp
and put them in the pond. They
multiplied very quickly. On a summer
night, our back yard would get quite noisy.
But the benefit was we never had to deal with mosquitos or other annoying
summer bugs. Behind our house was a huge
open field. We would spend our summer
days out there hunting lizards and horny toads to bring home as pets. Mom would never let us bring them in the
house and always made us turn them loose in the yard. We never had to worry much about snails and
other bugs that would destroy our garden.
I will end this blog post with telling you about my first
pet ever. He was a dog named Nosey. We called him Nosey because he had a white
spot on his nose. We got him when we
first moved from Colorado to Utah and it was before we were established enough
to raise chickens. I don’t have very
many memories of Nosey as we didn’t have him for very long. Nosey had a terrible habit of following the
school bus to school. I can remember
many a time being at school to see a flock of kids around something only to
find out it was my dog Nosey coming to be with us at school. We would have to go into the office and call
mom to come get him. One day Nosey
followed us to school and we never saw him again. I’ve always wondered what happened to
him. He’s one of the very few and rare
dogs that I’ve ever loved. After that,
we got the chickens and decided it wasn’t the best thing in the world to mix
dogs and chickens as dogs have a tendency to chase chickens. And a frightened chicken won’t lay eggs. Instead we started having cats and I
discovered that I liked cats much more than dogs. We did have the mice and birds to fight with
and like I said, there is no better mouse trap than a cat. I remember our first cat was named
“mama.”
